Informationalism In The Greater Toronto Area

Manual Castells and Scholte are correct with stating how the world is shifting more towards informationalism and away from industrialism. The industrial revolution began with new tools that made doing manual labour less labour intensive. This can be seen when looking changes in the farm industry. Since less people were required to work on farms due to having better machines, more people began moving into cities to find work. As a result, cities grew in size and different industries and factories were built. I grew up in the former borough of Scarborough, which was later amalgamated into present day Toronto. Slightly north of where I grew up is Markham, which was apparently still mainly farms in the 80s and early 90s and not as built up as it

Since I grew up in a quiet, residential style area, it is a little difficult to see the shift towards informationalism. Informationalism can be seen in the local McDonalds with the use of the self-serve ordering kiosk. When I worked there in 2012, a cashier had to take your order. But later in 2015/2016, the self-serve kiosks were installed and customers had the ability to take their own order, reducing the amount of human labour required. The kiosks were easy to use, and allowed customers the ability to directly customize their order. There were also visual displays that changed depending on the item that was selected. This small change is probably the biggest example of informationalism in the area during the time I was growing

Rather than manually type in a product code, then later manually balancing the till at the end of a shift, there was a new method that used electronic intelligence to do so. While this change did not occur during my time, is was an example of the growing capabilities that computers had over humans. Many automobile manufacturers are investing and testing self-driving cars, which may become extremely popular whenever it becomes availbe to the general public. At the University of Waterloo, many computer science and engineering students have the potential to work, or have already worked on some form of improving artificial intelligence. With the amount of work and research towards improving technology to complete human tasks, there is the potential that society continuous to move farther and farther away from industrialization and more towards